Clifford Simak - A Choice of Gods

T must confess that I am still somewhat confused by what we did with this second start, or rather what the second start did to us. For certainly what we did came about through no conscious effort. It happened to us. Not to me, of course, but to the others. I was, I suspect, too old, too molded in that older, earlier life, for it to happen. I stood aside, not particularly because I wanted to, but because there was no choice.

The important aspect of the whole situation, it seems to me, is that this business of traveling to the stars and talking back and forth across the galaxy (Martha, at this moment, has spent a good part of the afternoon gossiping across light years) is no more than a bare beginning. It may be that star-traveling and telepathy are the easy part of what has happened to us. They may be only the first easy steps, as hammering out a stone fist ax was the first and easy step toward the great technology that was later hammered out.

What comes next, I ask myself, and I do not know. There seems to be no logical progression to this sort of thing and the reason that there is no logic is that we are too new at it to have an understanding of what may be involved. The flint worker of prehistoric days had no idea why a stone would cleave in the fashion that he wished when he struck a blow in a certain place upon its face. He knew how, but not why, and he didn't spend much time, I would suppose, in figuring out the why. But as the cleaving of the flint came clear to men of later days, the mechanism of the parapsychic ability some millennia from now will come as clear to the men then living.,

As it stands at the moment, I can only speculate. Speculation is a footless endeavor, I am well aware, but I cannot refrain from it. Standing on my mountain top, I strain my eyes to look into the future.

Will there come a time, perhaps, when a race of godlike men can manipulate the very fabric of the universe? Will they be able to rearrange the atoms, bending their structures and their energies to the will of mind alone? Will they be able to save a star tottering close to the nova stage from its natural evolutionary course and enable it to continue as a normal, stable star? Will they be able, by the power of mind alone, to engineer a planet, converting it from a useless mass of matter to an abode for life? Will they be able to alter the genetics of a life form, by the power of mind alone, refashioning it into a more significant and more satisfactory life form? Perhaps more importantly, will they be able to free the minds of universal intelligences from the chains and shackles that they carry from the olden days of their evolutionary cycle so that the intelligences become reasonable and compassionate intelligences?

It is good to dream and there could be the hope, of course, that this all might come about, man finally emerging as a factor in introducing even a great orderliness into the universe. But I cannot see the path to reach this time. I can see the beginning and can dream the hoped-for end, but the in-between escapes me. Before such a situation can obtain there must be certain progress made. It is the shape of this progress I cannot determine. We must, of course, not only know, but understand the universe before we can manipulate it and we must arrive at the ability for that manipulation by a road for which there is no map. All must necessarily come by slow degree; we shall travel that unmapped road foot by weary foot. We must grow into this new ability of ours to make things happen without the aid of silly mechanical contrivances and the growth will not be rapid.

In my far view from the mountain of my age, I seem to see an end to it, a point beyond which we cannot or, perhaps, would not wish to go. Beyond which we might not dare to go. But I do not think there will be an end to it any more than there was an end to technology, until that day something took a hand and put an end to it here on the planet of its origin. Let alone, man himself would not have ended it. Man must always take that extra or that final step, finding once he has taken it it is not a final step. Today I can imagine only so far into the future, not having the data to extend my imagery beyond a certain point. But by the time man reaches that point where my imagination fails, he will have the data to push the point far into the future. There will be no place to stop.

If man persists, there'll be no stopping him. The question, it seems to me, is not whether he will persist, but whether he has the right to. I shudder when I envision man, the prehistoric monster, continuing into a time and world where he has no place…

"I do not know," Harrison said to Jason, "how I can talk reason to you. All we want is to send a small group of people here so they can learn the parapsychic abilities, in return for which…"

"I have already told you," Jason said, "that we cannot teach you the abilities. It's apparent you refuse to believe what I have told you."

"I think," said Harrison, "that you are bluffing. So, all right, you're bluffing. What more do you want? Tell me what you want."

"You have nothing that we want," said Jason. "That's something else you won't believe. Let me spell it out to you once again. You either are parapsychic or you aren't. You are technological or you aren't. You can't be both of them. They are mutually exclusive because so long as you remain technological, you can't be parapsychic and once you're parapsychic you have no use for technology. We do not want any of you here under the pretense of learning what we know or can do, even if you think you want what we know or can do. A few of you, you say, and it would be a few at first, then more of you, and after that still more and once you understand there was no chance of going parapsychic, why, then, you'd settle in. It's the pattern of technology—to grab and hold, then grab and hold some more…"

"But if we were sincere," protested Reynolds. "If we really meant it. And, of course, we do. We are being honest with you."

"I have told you it can't be done," said Jason. "If you want to be parapsychic, you don't have to come to Earth. Let those people who want to be parapsychic strip themselves of everything they have, let them live thus stripped for two thousand years. At the end of that time it might happen to them, although I'll not guarantee it. We didn't know of it until it happened to us. It was easier for us than it would be for you. There'd be a difference in the attitude of people who set out deliberately to acquire the abilities and that difference in attitude might make it impossible."

"What you are talking about," said John, "is a combination of your way of life with ours. You see a great advantage to both of us if it could be done. If some of your people could only find the way, you'd figure that you had it made. But it wouldn't work. If some of your people could become parapsychic, they'd stand alien from you; they'd take the same attitude toward you that we are taking now."

Harrison looked around the table slowly and deliberately, at each one sitting there. "Your arrogance is appalling," he said.

"We are not arrogant," said Martha. "We are so far from arrogant…"

"But you are," said Harrison. "You assume that you are better now than you were before. How better I don't know, but better. You hold technology in contempt. You view it with disdain, and perhaps alarm, forgetting that if it had not been for technology we'd all be squatting in a cave."

"Perhaps not," said Jason. "If we'd not cluttered Up our lives with machines…"

"But you don't know that."

"No, of course I don't," said Jason.

"So we should forget our squabbling," said Harrison. "Why can't we…"

"We've made our position clear," said Jason. "You must believe us when we say we can't teach you parapsychics. It's not something that can be taught. You must find it inside yourself. And you must believe us when we say we want nothing of technology. We people of this house have no need of it. The Indians dare not touch it, for it would ruin the kind of life they've fashioned. They live with nature, not on it. They take what nature gives; they do not rip their living out of nature. I can't speak for the robots, but I would suspect they have a technology of their own."